


Townsend is...

by fichuntie



Category: Mindgames - Jasmine Gold
Genre: Canon Compliant, Mention of Desiree, Meta, Metafiction, Multi, Pre-Canon, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:34:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fichuntie/pseuds/fichuntie
Summary: Townsend didn’t have a head for household management nor did most of the other young humans have interest in explaining it. Perhaps like slave-acrobats of the flesh the acrobatics of accounting and planning would be lost.A series of snippets beginning with "Townsend is..."
Relationships: Townsend/others, Townsend/slaves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. Townsend was beginning

Townsend was excited. He was a man, a human man, facing his first decision of purchase at the slave market. Everyone had high hopes for him. Unlike most of the men his age, Townsend was active and proposed new ideas. The Bearer had even complimented him for a suggestion to improve the borders of the city to make them both more pleasing and productive. It was based on one of the few books in the Bearer’s library, one that showed aqueducts and water canals, blue slices across a map and beautiful constructs over a field. For this, the Bearer had offered him an early and fist pick of the slaves at the Exchange. More so, the Bearer’s snide comments had offered him a complimentary nickname: Townsend. Each of the slaves was fresh from training, soft and new. Any marks made would be his own. Any training exactly to his specification. 

Townsend was confused. All his life he had been told the differences between humans and slaves. His parents’ household had a few, mainly houseslaves, but his mother had a particular favorite slave. He didn’t like to think of his mother that way, but almost certainly she used the slave for pleasure. But his own slave, picked with a practical eye by his father, seemed capable of all the tasks put before him. Including, Townsend was realizing, the solving of problems. Townsend didn’t have a head for household management nor did most of the other young humans have interest in explaining it. Perhaps like slave-acrobats of the flesh the acrobatics of accounting and planning would be lost. 

Townsend was intrigued. His slave’s problem solving didn’t make sense to him. Slaves, especially house-rags, didn’t have the intelligence to solve problems. Trying to ask the slave directly how he came up with ideas was frustrating. Lots of kneeling and whimpering and indirect answers. The blowjobs afterwards tended to be particularly enthusiastic at least. When he asked his parents (not about the blowjobs), they warned him of the purposeless pansy nature of such questions; but then, they’d given him similarly dismissive answers when he’d researched aqueducts. That gave an answer to this puzzle: Townsend would research at the library and bring his knowledge back to the everyone, yet again expanding their society. 

Townsend was frustrated. He’d taken a second slave, a young girl slave, who was a bit older on the premise that she might know more, much as humans learned with time. Alise did know more. She knew many practical things, more practical things than Townsend could keep in his head at once. The precise temperature to heat an oven and the right ratios for bread. The best way to remove a stain based on its components. The correct materials to order for structural repairs of a house. She knew many things when asked, but never volunteered this knowledge for discussion. Alise mentioned her training, having passed through the famous home of Desiree and a few other humans of note. But he’d gotten no closer to answers. He’d though he might at least transcribe some of the knowledge in the slave’s head, especially since her thoughts were so likely to stray to sex or other petty distractions. When mentioning this idea of transcription to a friend, the other woman had laughed at him. “Taking notes from a slave? What’s next? Will you transcribe the chattering of birds?” Even explaining the loss of training with Desiree’s impending retirement, she’d laughed at him. Townsend, worst of all as he was laughed at, felt a pitying judgement from his other slave, even as the boy groveled at his feet.


	2. Townsend was ending

Townsend was scared. Some gossipmonger – probably Annabelle— had brought a complaint to the Bearer. Something about the reading he’d been doing on the construction of the wall, some detail about the history of refugees, something very long ago and boring to everyone at the party. No one had cared to listen when he ranted about the construction of waterways or bridges. (Well, there was the elderly mason and his set of slaves, but to most humans his age they barely counted.) Suddenly, his academic questions had brought the Bearer’s direct attention. Direct negative attention. Townsend was invited to the Bearer’s chambers, told to leave his slave at home. It was a series of questions: When did you last whip your slave? How many scars do your slaves bear? What punishments do you prefer? Do you like your slaves? What feelings can a slave feel? Some answers were obvious, and with the Bearer’s cold eyes boring into his own, Townsend answered as honestly as he could. Usually he loved questioning conversations, reveled in the intrigues and answers that words brought forth. But here, before the Bearer, he felt queasy, even felt his hands tremble in fear. He wondered briefly, is this how a slave feels when asked what its master wants? 

Townsend was terrified. Since the Bearer had explained to him the punishments for pansies, Townsend had kept quiet about his research. But something in him couldn’t stop it, stop the questioning doubt. He’d taken in another slave and another. With each slave, he’d realized their unique skills and personalities. He’d watched one slave cry broken hearted over another who’d been whipped nearly to death by one of his friends in a pique. Townsend could not give up his unnatural curiosity, couldn’t look away from the rictus as passionate as a human’s. Sometimes he watched the other humans beat a slave for made up reasons, and ashamedly, he wished he had the ability to raise his whip because he feared his friends whispered about him. But it’d been months since he last whipped a slave, much less one of his own who he regularly talked to and conversed with. The terrible weeping grimace of what might be another human in pain. 

Townsend was pained. The Bearer had punished him, punished Alise, punished all of them. Townsend had never known pain. He’d seen the marks that slaves bore, deep red ones and healed over scars. He knew the precise pressure of a whip or lash to make the marks, but never had he known the pain of it. He knew the sick poultices shoved into every orifice. Now he knew what ten lashes meant, felt like. A healer had given him herbs to smoke and eat to ease the pain. The Bearer had tried to prevent the care, but his parents’ good standing had overruled. In exchange for the healing, all of his slaves had been transferred to the Exchange and he’d sit in on one of the slave trainings once healed. Yet… still… 

Townsend was curious. Again. He’d seen the way slaves were trained, barely 14 years of age. He’d heard them sob and cry out as they were broken open and their humanity scraped out. He’d sat, listening, and done nothing because his back still bled if he stretched too much. He had no slaves to tend to his injuries. Just the comfort of slow burning roach and herb, smoky haze over the pain and wondering. The healer hesitated now to give him too much at once, but again, his parents’ slaves were happy to comply with the pampering of the son. He read more, voracious sometimes, and not at all, despondent in other times. But he’d gotten to the core of it, to the very core of their town, the rot underneath the Bearer’s manor. He simply needed someone to discuss it with, to turn over the rot to the sun or engineer a way to rinse it with water. 

Townsend was castrated. Literally. Physically. The Bearer seemed convinced the physical castration would hail the rest, castrate his voice and castrate the rumors. The Bearer had said the procedure would take all joy of living from him. Certainly, in the moment, the pain had taken all joy and thought, any question of slavery or humanity away. After, Townsend wondered, in the few moments he was coherent through the pain and herb and sleeping droughts: Had he been happy before? Was whipping Alise happiness? With his castration, the Bearer had lost interest in Townsend, satisfied he wouldn’t propagate the problem further. In any sense. Besides, it would take months for him to heal, long enough for any human to lose interest in the rumors of the citadel’s history. 

Townsend was a pansy. Townsend did not fuck his slaves. (He could not.) Townsend did not beat his slaves. (He would not.) Townsend was not allowed to have more than one slave at a time. Townsend did not care that he was a pansy; he didn’t care that his once-friends laughed behind their hands at him in public. He didn’t care for his house, as usual, and didn’t instruct slaves to think on his behalf. (If they weren’t supposed to be able to, after all.) He had his books, his smoke, and his truth: one languid blend of comfort. Perhaps some slave passing through the filth remaining of his life would understand the truth he mumbled before passing out. But then, Townsend rolled another roach and forgot his pansy body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Def welcome concrit on this one  
> Wanted this to be a bit of meta fic to address why townsend might be so despondent and high all the time
> 
> i think there'd also be an interesting racial element to get into in other meta/metafic, like the implication that townsend actually _is_ of slave descent what with the way roach/weed/drug use is racially coded but i didn't get into that in this fic. just mentioning it.


End file.
